


between the devil and the deep blue sea

by whizzerdbrown



Category: Falsettos - Lapine/Finn
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, M/M, Merman?, Modern AU, charlotte & cordelia are mentioned but aren’t big parts, marvin & trina are together, marvin is a sea captain, marvin’s crew likes to say they’re pirates to scare people, mermaid au, umm more tags to come, whatever, whizzer is a mermaid
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-29
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-05-30 12:10:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15096422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whizzerdbrown/pseuds/whizzerdbrown
Summary: Marvin Cohen has been a pirate for more years than he could remember. Except, well, he considered himself more of just a ‘sea captain’ than a pirate, not that it mattered to the rest of his crew. And, despite all of those years of experience, he’s never seen any of the widely believed in sea monsters. As a kid, growing up, he was always told not to go to sea because the monsters would kill him. You know, like Nessie, or sirens, or evil mermaids - someone even warned him of the Kraken, which now made Marvin laugh.He didn’t believe in any of that. He didn’t have any reason to. At least twenty years working at sea, and he hadn’t seen anything. Of course, he’d heard plenty, his crew members were huge storytellers, but none of it sounded real.That was, until he returned home from a few months at sea, immediately directed to the market where ‘mermaid tails’ were being sold for very high prices. It didn’t take much longer after seeing that for Marvin to go home and speak with his family before going off to sea once again, determined to find the source of whatever big fish these tails were coming from.





	1. stories

**Author's Note:**

> credit to whomever started this AU? i don’t really know who it was, but it wasn’t me lmao.

Marvin only watched in amusement as the crew sat around, one of them telling the story of how his cousin was killed by a siren. It was late, and at this point they just had people switching off on both lookout and steering the ship. But it was late enough, and they were far enough, that they didn’t have much - if anything - to worry about. Except for, apparently, the sirens, as Samuel was warning them.

Sam was still pretty young, compared to some of the crew members, and even compared to Marvin, himself. Sam was twenty-years-old, and he was one of Marvin’s favorite crew members. He never said that - he told the group that he didn’t pick favorites, that he liked them all. That if he _didn’t_ like them, they wouldn’t be there, making money from his own orders. And that was, for the most part, true. There was nobody on that ship that Marvin disliked. There was just something about Sam, something that Marvin himself couldn’t even figure out, that put him up on the favorites list.

Sam was naive. Marvin could tell him, right now, that he lost his mother to the Loch Ness Monster and the boy would believe him. Probably even press for details. And Marvin could put together a bullshit story and likely scare the boy straight. But he didn’t do that. Instead-

“How do you know it was sirens? Were you there?”

All eyes turned to Marvin as he questioned the boy’s story, then they went back to storyteller himself, now questioning, too.

“Well, no, sir, I wasn’t there,” Samuel answered honestly. “But every single member of his crew said so. Every single one of them said that they saw him get eaten. They said-”

 _“They said?_ They could’ve lied to you.”

 _“All_ of them?”

Marvin shrugged. “How old were you when this happened?”

“I was ten, sir.”

And that was all Marvin needed. “They were definitely lying to you. Sailors love to scare little kids.”

That only started up another story, though, from another crewmember who believed that _he_ had a true story. “Yeah, well, explain _this_ one, sir!” The guy called, standing up from his seat on one of the various boxes to tell his story. This one was Adam. He was forty-five, older than Marvin. A funny guy, very much so the clown of the group. The other sailors snickered as Adam began his dramatic retelling of how he, himself, had really seen a group of sirens, and how they were all eating some unfortunate man who had fallen for their spell.

Marvin still wasn’t convinced, though. He’d been at sea for plenty of years, he’d lived in this area for all of his life, and never once had he seen any of the myths people talked about. No sirens, no mermaids, no giant squids, no Nessies. Nothing. Occasionally, they would run into another ship. Occasionally, that ship would try to attack and they would have to either attack back (Marvin preferred not to) or book it out of there. Occasionally, there would be an awful storm. But never, _ever_ was there anything more than that. Never were they attacked by a giant squid. Never were they lured to a shipwrecked island by sirens. Never did they see mermaids swimming alongside their ship, nor did they see those evil mermaids that were sometimes depicted in movies. A shit ton of nevers.

His son, Jason, constantly asked him about this stuff. Every time Marvin came home, the boy would come running for a hug, and immediately ask him if he saw anything. Sometimes, Marvin wished that he had seen something. Sometimes, Marvin wished that he could come home and tell both his wife and his boy about the giant squid that had almost toppled his boat over. Sometimes Marvin wished that he could tell them about the group of mermaids that waved at them from a small island. Sometimes Marvin wished that he could tell them that he saved one of his crew members from becoming siren bait. But he couldn’t. He wasn’t going to lie to them like that. He and Trina were trying to raise their eight-year-old on telling the truth. Since Marvin wasn’t home often, it was his goal to tell the truth, and only the truth, as much as he could while there.

And, although sometimes unfortunately, the truth was that none of those sea monsters existed.

 

They arrived home fairly early the next morning. He was quite surprised to be met almost immediately by another captain, grabbing his wrist and dragging him off, saying, “You’ve got to see this.”

Marvin knew her. Her name was Charlotte DuBois. Her wife was fairly good friends with Trina. Generally, in this area, it wasn’t very acceptable to be gay, especially with how out about it Charlotte was. But Charlotte was so highly respected, by both her crew and everyone that lived in this little area, that nobody said anything about it at all.

And then they were in the marketplace. Generally, people sold fish here. Fish, and sometimes vegetables that people were growing in their gardens. It was kind of useless, Marvin thought, because you could get the exact same things for a cheaper price at the store just a few blocks away. He supposed that it was just the novelty of being able to go to a market that had been open since the 18th century. He still thought it was stupid.

“Charlotte, what-” Marvin tried, but the woman shushed him as she pulled him through groups of people to one vendor in particular.

Hanging from hooks along the wall were large - and large was a bit of an understatement, really - fishtails, in multitudes of colors and shapes. Fishtails that Marvin had never in his life seen before. It seemed like some sort of auction, people shouting out high amounts of money to get one of these tails.

Only then did Charlotte deem it a good idea to explain. “He’s saying that they’re _mermaid tails._ Won’t say where he got them, where he found the mermaids, claims that this is his business now. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Me neither,” Marvin mumbled, glancing around at the chaotic group of people, still shouting out numbers. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know. They don’t _look_ fake,” she said.

Marvin thought for a minute. This could be his chance to go out and to be able to come back and tell his wife and his son that he did see something out there. If, of course, all of this was real.

“I’m going to find out,” he told her. “I need to tell my wife that I’m leaving again.”

 

“You’re what?”

Trina was in the middle of cooking dinner, something with chicken, when Marvin had come home and told her about what Charlotte showed him.

“I know, I just got home. But-”

“Marvin, you don’t even _believe_ in mermaids,” Trina stressed.

Jason’s head peeked in from around the corner. “Dad found a mermaid?”

“Not yet,” Marvin held his arms out, inviting the boy in for a hug - which he was quick to accept. “But I think I might. I’m leaving again soon, I came by to say hello.”

“Will you take pictures?” Jason asked, not seeming nearly as bothered about the idea of Marvin leaving again as Trina was. “I know your phone doesn’t work out there. But will you take pictures, so that we can see when you come back again?”

Marvin nodded, ruffling the boy’s hair, “Of course I’ll take pictures, J. I’ll take as many as I can.”

Trina only stared, tight-lipped, as the boys said their goodbyes once again, as Jason wished his father good luck in finding mermaids. And, because she was supposed to, she kissed Marvin goodbye. “When will you be home?”

“I don’t know,” he told her. “Whenever I come back.”

And with that, he was off once again.


	2. fear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> warning for graphic descriptions of violence

It isn’t always easy to pick the scariest thing that’s happened to you. People asked him that a lot, for some reason, when they first met him. As if knowing that would help you be close to someone. Up until recently, Whizzer Brown hadn’t had a good answer to that question.

 

They were minding their own business. It wasn’t like they were out of bounds or anything - well, okay, they were out of bounds for what their parents set for them when they were rebellious teenagers, but they were all adults, now, and they’d seen _plenty_ of other merfolk come up this way and come back safely. They weren’t, really, out of bounds. They stayed out of the area that ships came in. They were minding their own business, just exploring, and none of them deserved what happened to them that night.

It started when Lana decided to surface, despite the group telling her not to. And then she dared Whizzer to come with her and, being one to never back down from a dare, he easily agreed.

It was beautiful. He’d surfaced before, closer to abandoned islands, where they actually knew they’d be safe. Never like this, though. And it never looked as _beautiful_ as this. It was evening, the sun was setting, and the sky was gorgeous from there.

“Whiz, look,” Lana was saying, pulling Whizzer’s attention away from the horizon and over to the large ship. It was coming towards them, at a fast pace.

“We need to go,” Whizzer said quickly, about to pull her back down to safety - but then the rest of their group had come up, too.

And he hadn’t had enough time to warn them, to shoo them back under, because they’d been spotted.

A loud, deep, gravelly voice yelled, “I’ll be _damned!”_

Another one shouted, “Mermaids!”

And a third one, “Get the nets!”

And then they _knew_ they were in trouble. And they knew how _dangerous_ this was, and they knew that survival chances were low, but they couldn’t do anything. Because even as they all tried to get away, they all tried to scatter, the nets were thrown into the water and surrounded the small group.

They struggled against the netting, but it was no use. They were already pulled up into the boat, and humans were looming over them.

“Cut off their tails,” One of the men said.

“But, sir-“

 _“Cut them off._ Do you know how much money we could make off of this?”

And then one of the men held up a sword.

 

All Whizzer could really remember past that point was red, the screams of his friends, and multiple blasts of sharp, searing pain. But he knew that he was the only survivor. He remembered waking up surrounded by other merfolk, all of them immediately asking what happened. He remembered feeling sick just _thinking_ about what he saw. He couldn’t remember how he got away, why it was only him who survived. He only remembered how _awful_ it was.

He may have gotten away alive, but he almost wished he didn’t. If he was dead, he wouldn’t have to remember the screams of agony as his friends were mutilated in front of each other, in front of him. If he was dead, he wouldn’t have to remember the awful, coppery smell of all of the blood. If he was dead, he wouldn’t have to think about how he got away alive and how none of his other friends did. But, no. He was left with the physical scars of being sliced a few times by the sharp blade and the mental scars of being forced to watch his friends get cut up.

Part of Whizzer wished he’d died with them. Part of him was glad he survived so that he could warn everyone else.

They relocated, though it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t like the entire ocean had many places for this small civilization of merpeople to live in, but they _needed_ to move. Now, humans knew the area of where to find them. This could happen more often, even with them not surfacing, and there weren’t enough of them left for them to just stay there and risk it. So they moved, out further in the ocean, near a small island. The island was clearly abandoned, and it didn’t look like anyone or anything had been by in years.

It was small, it was uncomfortable. There were no great places to sleep, their food supply was low - they couldn’t take much with them - but at least they were safe from humans. For now. They were safe for now.

Whizzer knew it was only a temporary fix. This had happened before, when he was young. He didn’t remember it, and nobody had explained to him what happened when he was so young, but both of his parents had met the same fate that his friends did. He’d been raised on stories, of course, that humans were awful creatures. That humans were evil, harmed just to harm, that they took things that they didn’t even need just because they _could._ And, growing up, Whizzer hadn’t believed that. Because his aunt told him that his parents had just swum away, left him, gone to live somewhere else, and because the rest of the people he talked to went along with her story. Because he was a rebellious, mischievous child, a child that was drawn to things that were supposed to be dangerous. Growing up, Whizzer wasn’t scared. Growing up, Whizzer hadn’t even, really, _believed_ that humans even _existed._ And now he did. Now he knew, now he believed, and now he _feared._

And it was going to take a lot before he could ever put his trust into anyone else again.


End file.
